


Bella Court

by heartofstanding



Category: 15th Century CE RPF
Genre: Angst, Fertility Issues, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: Margaret moves into her new Palace of Placentia, once Bella Court. It is a place of beauty, solitude and peace - save for the woman whose footsteps wake Margaret in the night.(a ghost story)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Bella Court

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be posted for Halloween but my frankly excellent time management skills saw me only finish the first draft on November 1.
> 
> Historical notes at the end.

**Greenwich, July 1452**

Margaret sweeps through the halls of the Palace of Placentia, once Bella Court, and wants to laugh. It is hers, for now and always, this beautiful palace that seems to float on the dazzling river. She has improved it, ordering extensions, replacing the reed mats with terracotta tiles, new glass in the windows and daisies carved into pillars and arcades, a pier and vestry added. Anything that spoke too strongly of Gloucester’s ownership has been destroyed.

There are remnants, though, of his ownership – the halls are still full of light and colour and some of the tapestries remain, glowing jewel-like against the walls. She asked that the decoration remain close to what was there before; Gloucester may have been a traitor but he had an eye for beauty. The thing that worries her is that the rooms no longer smell as sweet, that her choice of perfumes, dominated by lilies and frankincense, seem to hang half-rotting in the air and underneath is the scent of dust.

That will be fixed. The palace might need airing after all the work or perhaps her perfumes have spoiled in the summer heat. A new batch will be made.

*

Margaret wakes in the night, lying in the darkness behind her drawn bed-hangings. She feels too alert and tense for the hour and for the fact she was just asleep. She is waiting for something to happen but she cannot work out what or even why she woke. The bed is her best, she has slept on it many times before but this is her first night at the Palace of Placentia. Perhaps she is disturbed by the silence, the river lapping against the shore. Her women snuffle in their sleep and Margaret sighs, kicking down her sheets – it is a warm night – and rolling over. She presses her face into the pillow, curls her legs to her chest.

_Listen,_ something inside of her orders. _Listen._

The crack of a log in her fireplace, the murmur of the river. Footsteps climbing up the stairs, pacing outside the door. The low call of an owl. Quiet feet moving around her room. Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps.

Margaret reaches out, her fingers seizing around the hangings and about to rip them apart. She will confront this late night wanderer, send them fleeing. But the footsteps stop, suddenly. One of her women mumbles in her sleep and the world is quiet again.

*

In the morning, Margaret does not mention the footsteps to her women. It seems likely that it was one of them unable to sleep. But it happens again on the second night, her sleep disturbed by the sound of echoing footsteps, a soft sigh. On the third night, the footsteps come again, accompanied by weeping – quiet, restrained but utterly heartbroken. It stops when Margaret pulls open her hangings. She stays still but the weeping does not start up again.

‘There is someone,’ she says in the morning. ‘That wanders about at night. It is to stop.’

Her women are confused and protest. Some confess with blushing cheeks to using the pot during the night but all say they know better than to wander so close to her bed when she is sleeping. Margaret presses her hands to her face, breathes in.

‘I heard weeping, last night,’ she says.

They deny it again. Margaret leaves it alone. Perhaps she is only dreaming the sound of the footsteps. When she was a girl, she had such vivid dreams. They seemed so real and she believed in them – the secret passage in her father’s study to a labyrinth of underground chambers, the giant woman who danced in a valley – but she mentioned them to her nurse or mother, they grew confused and told it wasn’t real, that she must have dreamt it.

On the fourth night, she wakes again to the sound of footsteps and slips out of her bed, careful to be quiet. The floor with its new terracotta tiles is icy against her feet and she finds all her women asleep and the footsteps still sounding, the air growing sweeter, like roses and irises. The way the palace used to smell when it was Gloucester’s.

‘Who is there?’ Margaret whispers. ‘Go back to bed. It is late.’

The footsteps seem too close, moving past her to the bed. Margaret turns and through a shaft of moonlight filtered through the glass, she sees her bed hangings swaying as if a hand is stroking them. Margaret should be able to see the person making these footsteps, should see the hand disturbing her hangings, but she can’t.

Then comes the briny stink of the ocean, the deafening roar of fierce waves crashing against dark, jagged rocks. A cold, savage wind blows and the ice of it pierces Margaret down to her very bones. She turns and turns again, searching, and she hears the rasp of velvet against reed mats as the waves crash again. She feels their spray against her face, the salt making her eyes sting and water.

‘Who are you?’ Margaret demands. ‘What are you doing?

*

Margaret wakes up in her bed, dry and untouched. Her women are chattering, giggling over gossip. Margaret covers her face with her hands. She wants to ask if they woke during the night and felt as if the ocean was in the room with them but it would sound mad.

She will go and hear mass. She will be calm and the world will be right.

‘Was the weather wild, last night?’ she asks as they wash her. The rosewater reminds her of how sweet the air had been before the ocean came. ‘I thought I heard wind. Or rain.’

She takes her Paternoster beads and holds them, rubbing a coral bead between her fingers.

‘No, your grace,’ Jacquetta says. ‘The weather was perfectly still. It will be fine for many days yet.’

Margaret glances towards the window, the shining morning. It must have been another dream.

*

The day is pleasant and she forgets about the madness of the night. It was a dream, a strange, vivid dream but a dream, nonetheless. With her women, she walks along the banks of the river and ventures out onto the pier to watch the boats sail past. Margaret looks down into the waters of the Thames, sees how deep and dark they are. She wanders through the gardens, makes plans for hunting in the afternoon and smells the flowers freshly bloomed.

She is glad to be here, that she had managed to secure the Palace for herself when Gloucester died. It is like the palace itself is welcoming her, unfurling its beauty to greet her and keep her warm. If only everything else in England was as fair and welcoming. First it was Gloucester and the failed peace with France, then it was the rebellion and now it is York and Somerset at each other’s throats. There is no rest, no comfort anywhere but her palace.

She must invite Henry to spend a few days with her here.

When she goes in, out of the corner of her eye, she sees a woman walking, as finely dressed as a duchess, her gown sweeping the floor and glittering in the sunlight. Margaret turns to see who this duchess is and there is no one there.

*

Margaret sweeps into the second-best room that she uses for dressing and bolts the door behind her. She sinks onto the floor, holding her knees to her chest. She will not cry, she will not cry. She will not scream, she will not scream. It was nothing, a careless remark – she _knows_ what they say, do they not think the anxiety does not beat at her in every idle moment? That she should be Henry’s wife for seven years and still yet to fall pregnant, to do the duty of queen, wife and woman and bear an heir?

She beats her fists against the floor, lets out a sob. She _tries._ God above knows, she _tries._ She has taken the physicians’ advice, used the herbs he prescribed, eaten the diets he has devised for her. She has prayed to St Anne and Our Lady of Walsingham. She has fasted and prayed until standing made her dizzy and weak and still, there is no child.

What else is she supposed to do? She cannot just stand aside, have her marriage undone, not after all that that has been given up by England in her name, willingly or not.

She beats her fists against the floor and then rests her forehead on her knees as she tries to stop herself from weeping. Her tears are so loud that it seems someone else is in the room, weeping with her. She is young and healthy still, there is _time,_ as Henry says. She rubs her hands against her eyes, breathes in. No more tears, no more weakness.

*

Margaret is holding a ball of white wax, soft and warm in her palms. Her fingers sinking into it and she keeps smoothing over the indents they make until the ball is soft and whole again. She does not like the woman sitting opposite. She is small and neat, her teeth slightly crooked, her eyes sharp and her mouth always knows what to say and mingles scorn with comfort.

‘This isn’t…’ Margaret says but it’s not her voice but a hesitant English one. ‘It can’t be…’

‘It’s not witchcraft, your grace,’ the woman says. ‘Perfectly safe and holy.’

‘It seems as though it should be, though.’

The woman smiles. ‘Does that matter, your grace?’

‘A child born through witchcraft…’

Margaret feels herself thrumming, wanting to sit taller and stare at this woman opposite, to wait until that sly smile disappears and she finally tells the truth.

‘We have tried everything else,’ the woman says and Margaret feels her body sinking, her shoulders curling in on themselves. How heavy her hennin feels, how every thread in the swans embroidered on her surcoat seems to add weight to her, dragging her down. Her rings glitter in the sun, the diamond her husband gave her on their wedding (but Henry gave her a brooch, not a ring…) brightest of all.

‘What good is a child if they have no soul?’

The woman’s smile widens. Margaret wants to slap her.

‘What good,’ the woman says, ‘is a wife who cannot give her husband a child?’

Margaret feels the agony of those words twice over. Her own shame and hurt doubled. She wants a child, she needs a child and this vital thing, the most important of her duties, remains out of reach. This useless body, this useless womb. She has _tried_ and _tried_ and there is nothing left—

Nothing left but this.

The wax in her hand. Her fingers begin to mould it, shaping a child. The child must be a boy, a strong boy who will be fit and healthy, who will live and be his father’s heir. Handsome – yes, kind – yes, smart – yes. How does she form all these things in the wax? She would be content with any child, so long as they lived and had a soul, but she is not making the child just for her, but for her husband, for England.

Margaret stares at the thing she has made, this beautiful wax-child, and wills it to live. She glances towards the woman opposite her, sees flames lick at her feet, her face burning black.

*

She wakes in the morning, alone in her bed. The sun is distant and gleaming and she thinks of the things she will have to do. The letters she will have to send, pardons she seeks for unfortunate souls and the charities she wishes to perform. Another physician must come to consult with her, see what can be done about her childless state. Margaret closes her eyes and lies back on the bed.

She thought this place would be a sanctuary and perhaps it is – she feels more at ease here than anywhere else. But there is no sanctuary from her duties, failed and otherwise.

She lays her hand against her belly, imagines how it would feel to have a child growing inside her and hears faint laughter that could well be a sob.

*

She hears the footsteps again in the night. Margaret groans and rolls over, burying her face into the pillow. These stupid dreams. The footsteps move closer and closer, the hangings whisper. A weight plops down on the end of Margaret’s bed and she smiles as she kicks out at it – a cat, then, wandering the halls at night. Not a dream but an animal.

Her feet find nothing. Margaret jerks up. There’s nothing on her bed. No cat.

The footsteps move again, sounding close to the window. Margaret grits her teeth. She’s had enough of this. She rips her hangings apart, gets to her feet and the room is empty.

She stands again, shivering at how cold the floor is. She paces her room restlessly – who is it, why can she hear footsteps but never _see_ the woman making them? She walks to the window, lays her fingers against the icy glass. The room smells of roses and irises though it shouldn’t. In the gardens, below, she sees a faint light flickering, like there is someone out there with a lamp or candle. She turns back, wanting to go back to bed where she is warm, but the ocean comes.

Wild and ferocious, the waves crashing against the stones and throwing up spray that stings her face. The smell of salt, the fierceness of the wind tugging at her. She steps closer to it, lays her hand against the stone wall. The gale tears at her veils, she can taste salt against her lips. She braces her weight against the wall, imagines pulling herself up onto its narrow edge – if she fell, it would be over. If she fell, there is no one left who would care.

No, that isn’t right, Margaret thinks.

A hand seizes around her wrist, like iron. It pulls her back sharply, violently, and Margaret wants to turn and strike its owner for their presumption. But all she does is shudder.

‘No. Come inside,’ a man says as if speaking to a child or a madwoman. ‘Now.’

‘You needn’t worry,’ she says but it isn’t her voice but an English one full of bitter grief. ‘I don’t want to throw myself in.’

_Liar,_ Margaret thinks.

She feels the man’s fingers dig into her wrist, against the scar there (Margaret has no scars), and she steps back, lets him pull her inside, away from the sea. Margaret gasps. She looks around the room frantically but her women are all asleep and the air is still, smelling of frankincense and lilies.

*

Dreams. They were not real – they could not be. How could the weather be still one moment and then wild the next, how could the ocean come to the Palace of Placentia? They had to be dreams, a return to her childhood when she dreamed so vividly – she looks in the morning for bruises and finds none, her body is always dry and warm. They were dreams – either that, or she is going mad.

Perhaps she is. Who would blame her? She has failed to give her husband an heir and the country is restless. This serenity she has found here is a façade and perhaps she should leave. Though there seems to be little point. At least here, she feels as though she can rest peacefully – or would, if her dreams did not disturb her so – and be distracted by her beautiful surroundings.

She calls for a hunt, hopes that by exhausting herself she will sleep without dreaming.

*

Margaret sweeps into her room and stops, short, hearing her women chatter behind her. The room has changed utterly. The hangings are in deep blue with silver swans, not her daisies and Henry’s antelopes on a field of green, more pillows on the bed, different tapestries on the wall, and a table scattered with books between two chairs by the fire. A woman is standing by the bed, drawing back the covers, her hands assured. Margaret has never seen her before.

‘Your grace?’ Jacquetta says. ‘Are you well?’

Margaret turns and sees Jacquetta’s face, masked with concern. She blinks and her room is as it ought to be and the woman by the bed is gone, the covers untouched, and the hangings green again.

‘Only tired,’ Margaret says.

Jacquetta frowns at her, not entirely convinced, but Margaret smiles and distracts her, ordering her room and person to be prepared for bed. Washed and dressed in a fresh shift for the night, Margaret kneels at her prie-dieu and prays while her women move about the room, folding back the bed covers and extinguishing most of the candles. Margaret finishes her prayers and rises.

As she moves, she sees a woman moving past the fire and the fire glows through her body.

*

Margaret doesn’t dream. She lies in her bed and feels her body exhausted by the afternoon’s hunt, feels her body still rising and falling in tune with the horse. She sleeps through the night and in the morning, she wakes to the bed shifting beneath her as if someone is getting up from it. Margaret groans – it’s early yet.

‘Why are you here?’

There’s quiet and stillness. The river sighs and murmurs and Margaret thinks she must be half-asleep still. The air, after all, smells of roses and irises.

‘I dream myself here,’ a voice says, English like the one Margaret’s heard in her dreams before. ‘I was happy here. Long ago. But I have such terrible dreams.’

Margaret’s eyes slit open. There is a beautiful woman perched on the edge of the bed, bright hair loose around her face. Margaret can see through her, light and shadow moving over her face. Another dream then.

‘Why do you think I care about your dreams?’

The woman shrugs. ‘You asked. I don’t know why you’re always here but you are. I don’t even know who you are.’

Margaret bristles and grits her teeth.

‘This is my home.’

The woman raises her eyes to the hangings, reaches out with a transparent finger to trace the chain of daisies carved into the bedpost. ‘It was mine first.’

‘Was not,’ Margaret says. ‘It was Gloucester and Gloucester’s dead.’

The woman flinches. ‘I know. I know. Parliament said I was dead too but they won’t – won’t let me die.’

Margaret shivers, hearing the whisper of the sea on the edge of the woman’s voice. She reaches out slowly, tugging open the hangings for a fracture of light. The woman is older than she thought, grey amongst her bright hair, her beautiful face lined and ravaged by the sun and salt. Her eyes are full of tears.

‘Don’t weep,’ Margaret says sharply.

‘I thought I would run out of tears but there’s always more.’

Margaret shakes her head. If this was one of her women, she would shove a napkin into her hands and tell her to leave and return when she’s less damp but this is a dream and she’s not entirely sure the woman would listen.

‘Your grace?’ Jacquetta is calling. ‘Your grace, are you awake? Do you wish to eat before we go down for Terce?’

Margaret is alone. She sits up in bed, looking around, and then pushes herself out of bed.

*

Margaret spends the mass service with her fingers working over her Paternoster beads as she thinks. The woman – she may well be born of a dream but she seems to be someone that existed once rather than a figment of Margaret’s imagination. She had grieved for Gloucester, named the Palace of Placentia her home – and she was not shy. Perhaps the woman was one of Gloucester’s wives, her shade woken in Margaret’s dreams because Margaret is now in residence at what was once Gloucester’s home.

Margaret’s fingers slow and go still.

The woman said she had been declared dead by parliament. Margaret had dreamed of her making the wax figure. The woman brought the wild sea with her, a fragment of a terrible dream – or a terrible memory. Peel Castle, on the Isle of Man.

Margaret sets her beads down, shifts her weight from her knees to her ankles. Hunger gnaws at her belly. She thinks of the gardens outside, the smell of honeysuckle. July has just begun and she is dreaming of a witch.

*

The footsteps, again. Margaret sits up in her bed, drawing the hangings back. She’s careful to be quiet even as she slips the robe over her shoulders and pushes her feet into her slippers. She winds her Paternoster beads around her fingers, picks up the crucifix.

The footsteps move closer, she hears the rasp of velvet against reed mats and stands slowly, eyes searching. At first, she thinks there is nothing but then she sees a faint shadow shaped like a woman, the head turning.

The air changes. Irises and roses, the faint hint of brine. Margaret steps forward, careful to be quiet. The shadow woman turns and turns, heading for the bed, her ghostly fingers run along the edge of the hangings until they find the gap.

‘I know who you are,’ Margaret says. ‘I don’t know why you are here, but – begone!’

The shadow woman begins to weep. ‘I can’t find him,’ she says. ‘Where is he? I cannot—’

‘He’s not here,’ Margaret says steadily despite the chill working through her fingers and toes, creeping up her spine. ‘Begone.’

‘I can’t find him, I can’t find him,’ the woman says.

She sounds so sad that Margaret feels a stab of pity. She buries it.

‘I will call a priest,’ Margaret says. ‘He will bless this room, send you scurrying—’

‘I cannot find him,’ the shadow woman says. ‘I thought I was dead but I cannot find him.’

She drops to the floor and begins to weep even harder. Margaret does not move. At great length, she rouses herself, licks salt from her lips.

‘Eleanor Cobham, begone. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, begone,’ she says. She raises her crucifix towards the woman. ‘Go back to your sins and penance and try no more trickery.’

Nothing happens. Margaret glances around the room, sees not even a flicker of a shadow. She holds the crucifix to her chest. She is not afraid, she tells herself, she is not afraid.

‘I can’t,’ Eleanor wails. ‘I can’t, I can’t find him.’

‘He’s dead,’ Margaret says. ‘And you are witching.’

Eleanor shakes her head, hiccupping. ‘Where is he? I cannot – I want him. The only one who loved me. I can’t, I can’t – where is he? I can’t.’

Margaret reaches out, lays her hand on Eleanor’s head. It’s odd, how she can feel hair and yet it looks like she is only pretending to touch a shadow. She strokes the hair cautiously, feels Eleanor shudder.

‘You are witching,’ Margaret tells her. ‘And you are going to hell.’

Eleanor throws off Margaret’s hand and is on her feet again, pacing wildly. Her hair is loose, sometimes a long, bright mass falling to the small of her back, sometimes greying, short and ragged. Sometimes she is old, sometimes she is young. Her hand is raised to her face, the loose sleeve of her shift slipping down past her elbow. Sometimes her arms are white and perfect, other times they are littered with scars and half-healed incisions. Her eyes are unchanging, filled with tears.

‘I lost,’ Eleanor says. ‘Everything. I can’t – they won’t let me – where is he?’

Margaret raises herself cautiously. ‘Go away,’ she says. Her voice trembles only a little.

‘It’s all different,’ Eleanor says. ‘It’s all – he’s not here. You – _you_ are, you with your pride and your cruelty. The wheel turns and turns. One day you will be like me.’

Margaret begins to grin. ‘I will not.’

Eleanor, though, isn’t listening. She tears back the bed-hangings, pulls back the covers and throws the pillows to the floor. She runs to a window, slams her fist against it and then darts to another. Margaret watches her, wondering when it will end, and knows how it will end. She will wake up in bed, her body comfortable, and Eleanor will be gone. Eleanor lets a wail and falls to her knees, beginning to weep quietly into her hands.

*

Margaret stays in bed the next few nights, pushing a pillow over her head when she hears footsteps and then weeping, Eleanor’s voice muttering. She wills it to be over and in the morning, she dresses and enjoys the gardens in the sunlight, writing her letters. She has a priest come to bless her rooms but it doesn’t stop Eleanor from coming. There is a night where she hears Eleanor weeping again, so quietly, that she feels that dreadful stab of pity and has to remind herself that this is the evil woman Henry is terrified of.

She is not entirely sad that she will be leaving to meet with Henry soon. At least her nights will be silent then.

Sometimes, she thinks she sees Eleanor, walking through the halls of the palace during the day but these are just half-seen glimpses. It could just be shadows or one of her women.

On July 7, Margaret is out in the gardens at dusk. She has left her ladies to their own devices to strike out on her own. The gardens have changed little since Gloucester’s time, though she has had many more daisies planted. She stands beneath the swaying branches of a hawthorn, watches the wild birds fluttering above her. In the distance, she sees a man and a woman, dressed in the greatest finery and walking arm-in-arm. She smiles to herself – perhaps this is Somerset and his wife, come to visit her. But it’s not them – the man’s hair is too dark, his body too tall, and the woman is too young. The woman turns towards Margaret and smiles. Eleanor. Standing with her arm around the man Margaret knows, suddenly, as Gloucester. She blinks and they are gone.

That night, there are no footsteps, no weeping, and Margaret’s dreams are quiet though her thoughts are not.

**Author's Note:**

> Eleanor was accused of treasonable necromancy in 1441 and imprisoned for the remainder of her life. Her most famous prison was Peel Castle, on the Isle of Man (1446-1449) and she died in Beaumaris Castle on July 7, 1452. After Gloucester's death in February 1447, she was declared legally dead by an Act of Parliament to prevent her benefiting from his will, though the contents/terms of Gloucester's will are unknown. It was initially claimed he died intestate but this was almost certainly a pretext for the Crown to claim his property for their own purposes and, indeed, many of the individuals involved in his downfall benefited by the seizure of his estate.
> 
> Amongst those who were benefited was Margaret of Anjou who received custody of his palace at Greenwich, Bella Court, and had it transformed into her Palace of Placentia (or La Pleasaunce). Her renovations work took about five years to complete, meaning Margaret might have been able to live there in 1452. However, whether she was there in early July 1452 is something I couldn't find out and personally think is a little doubtful. Still, it worked for this fic. Margaret, arriving in England four years after Eleanor's downfall, never met Eleanor but probably knew who she was. 
> 
> The length of time it took for Margaret and Henry to produce an heir has been the subject of endless speculation and it is impossible to work out why. Theories range from Henry VI being impotent, asexual or in need of a "sex coach", or Margaret having fertility issues - possibly brought on by an eating disorder, but not one theory is clearly evidenced. There is no strong evidence to suggest that Edward of Westminster wasn't Margaret and Henry's biological son beyond gossip. 
> 
> Two resources that were helpful in writing this included 'Tragedy, Transgression, and Women’s Voices: The Cases of Eleanor Cobham and Margaret of Anjou' by Kavita Mudan Finn in _Viator_ , Volume 47, Issue 2 and Helen E. Maurer's _Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England_ (Boydell, 2005).


End file.
